


An Exercise in Frustration: Let's Play Sburb!

by Legendary



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Let's Play
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-06 17:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendary/pseuds/Legendary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>FAQs and such-like have gotten common, so I thought I'd throw my own efforts into the ring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My Motley Crew

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by quite a lot of things.
> 
> [Let's Play Sburb: Commoner Cycle Modstravaganza](230928) is a good start, but hasn't updated for nearly a year now.
> 
> [Xalrath's Character Creation Guide](211975/chapters/317350) is what inspired me in the first place, and [GodsGiftsToGrind's Sburb Glitch FAQ](340777/chapters/551606) was an additional inspiration which some details have been taken from, though my incarnation of Sburb is unique.

Let's Plays have a weird history in these parts, don't they?

AH's Let's Play, showcasing his own personal mods and really Sburb in general, is still running with a pretty massive fanbase. If Skaia Net hadn't gone under in between release and AH's Let's Play, we'd probably be looking at some sort of sequel, expansion pack, or at least general bug fix by this point. Hell, AH would probably just work for them.

On the other end of the spectrum are a boggling array of Let's Plays that don't even manage to get off the ground. I'm not entirely sure why this happens, though in some cases I expect that it has to do with a mod obsession. A Let's Play with a couple of mods is one thing, but I've seen some with fifty mods that were never tested together properly and then end up exploding in a hilarious mix of bugs and failure.

I intend to avoid that. I'm running one of the Overhaul Mods, of course, this one designed by arduousRavager. I've been experimenting with it since release, so I'm pretty familiar with all the weird details and stat bullshit it throws at me. This isn't to say that I know what every damn classpect combo behaves like, or how they might end up complementing each other, but you know. I'm prepared for this sort of experience. I've kind of been going back and forth on including other mods, and I think for this particular Let's Play I won't. AR's Overhaul has a lot of little changes done to Sburb's systems so it's not like I won't be treading some new ground anyway.

As for any special features with this Let's Play, I've given myself one boon: I'll keep rerolling until no members of my team share the same +/- role (ie, if I have a Prince, no Bard. If I roll a Muse, no Smith). This'll at least give me some variety to work with. Now, the downsides: Everyone has to make it out of the game alive. One save file. Standard stuff. As a special challenge, I won't let any of my characters use powers that weren't designed for their class. There's already penalties for doing so in-game, but most people agree that a Prince of Life healing everyone from near death is worth that. For relationships, I intend to make everyone Friends or higher. I also won't allow any love triangles at the end of the game. If someone has unrequited love for a member of a relationship, I have to pair them off with a spare to distract them.

To make this actually somewhat difficult to work with, I picked a set of eight kids to torture, and set the Initial Relationship value to "Low". Most of them don't even know each other. In fact, in this particular instance there are so few actual connections that I'm probably going to ignore the game recommended order and string them together based on who is already acquainted with whom. This is actually a little bit dumb on my part, but let's consider it an extra bit of a challenge based on realism: I won't let the kids array themselves in any way that wouldn't make real life sense.

And now, without further ado, the kids and their fun. I am presenting them in the order that the game generated them (recommended entry order), but I will of course ignore it and do my own thing.

  
NAME: Amelia Scarret  
CHUMHANDLE: daringNaturalist  
INTERESTS: Gardening, movies, skating  
TITLE: Guide of Flesh  
ALIGNMENT: Derse  
STATS: High Lass-sass, Youngster Gumption, and Sluthiness, which is basically standard run for this classpect. Her other stats are all pretty average, except Wakelessness, which is at the bare minimum.  
MODUS: Tic-Tac-Toe (9 cards)  
INSTRUMENT: Violin  
PERSONAL NOTES: Hmm. Guide's a pretty fun class, and Flesh is one of the weirder aspects. Basically, Guides are spacial scryers who are supposed to be looking out not for themselves but their teammates. Showing them the way. Flesh deals with prototypings and stagnancy, meanwhile. It's a bugger I've never really gotten a handle on, but I'm THINKING that in this case a Guide of Flesh will be mapping out the enemy formations for everyone else to work out.  
Of particular concern with her though is that low WAK. This basically means that she will never be able to wake up on Derse unless her real self dies, and since neither Guide nor Flesh level WAK naturally I'd have to waste the stat points I can allocate personally on it if I wanted her to be useful. I'll probably be leaving well enough alone. You really only need two dedicated dreamers anyway, one for each moon.  
Finally, I'm really intrigued by her Modus. I've never rolled this one up before. I just hope I'm not permanently limited to nine cards.  
  
NAME: Steven Harding  
CHUMHANDLE: naturalNobody  
INTERESTS: Winter activities, cooking, gardening  
TITLE: Heir of Storm  
ALIGNMENT: Prospit  
STATS: High Mangrit and Pulchritude. His Sluthiness and Imagination are both pretty low though, which is kind of a shame because imaginative Heirs are pretty amazing. Oh well.  
MODUS: File Cabinet (10 cards)  
INSTRUMENT: Trumpet  
PERSONAL NOTES: Heirs are straightforward enough. You throw them at a lot of enemies. They do a lot of physical-based damage. Sometimes there's debuffs too. Then enemies die. Heirs of Storm are even easier to deal with because their aspect is elemental anyway. There's not much to say here.  
His stats are a lot better than Amelia's in terms of averages (though of course they have the same stat total), just because none of them are 1's. File Cabinet Modus is going to be a bit of a hassle though, since I'll have to identify everything he captchalogues by its captcha code. But hey, it'll be a great crash course in this game's specific alchemy system, so there's a silver lining there.  
Basically, I have no complaints with this guy, and whenever I'm feeling overstretched, I'll leave Steven to do his own thing. This is a kid who can handle himself.  
  
NAME: Thomas Faukner  
CHUMHANDLE: needlingAssassin  
INTERESTS: War games, kid's cartoons, weaponry  
TITLE: Bard of Peace  
ALIGNMENT: Derse  
STATS: High Mangrit and Pulchritude. Again. This guy's worst stats are Scamprosity and Imagination, the latter of which kind of sucks for a Bard. I'll muddle through somehow.  
MODUS: Jenga (18 cards)  
INSTRUMENT: Flute  
PERSONAL NOTES: I mentioned I was rerolling until all eight of these guys were relatively unique. What I didn't mention was that I was sticking with the first combination that appeared. This is by far my least favorite role of the set. Bards are annoying except for their magic guarding techniques for the crowd, and the Peace aspect is probably the worst of the ten elemental aspects, being associated with ice TECHNICALLY, but mostly related to ending conflict. And of course, since Bards are passive destroyers this probably means that this guy will be an Aggro hog, which... Heh. That'll fun.  
Like I said, the low Imagination will be a problem that is only amplified by the fact that the only magical damage he can actually prevent from happening is to everyone else. I'll have to keep him away from Basilisks and Liches, along with the more unsavory upper-level underlings. Hopefully I can correct this over time, but god only knows what stats I'll decide are important for him. Lands are as much of an influence as everything else.  
Finally, how appropriately Bard-ish that he'd have the Jenga Modus. Terrible to deal with if you're not good at its minigame, but hot damn do the eighteen cards come in handy. Delightful.  
  
NAME: Nellie O'Brian  
CHUMHANDLE: dedicatedAnalyst  
INTEREST: Psychology, fishing, cooking  
TITLE: Thief of Rage  
ALIGNMENT: Prospit  
STATS: High Lass-Sass, Scamprosity, and Pulchritude. Literally everything else is low. This lady is going to be a bit unbalanced in the long run. But who cares? Thiefs just need speed.  
MODUS: Hash Table (9 cards)  
INSTRUMENT: Banjo  
PERSONAL NOTES: Thieves are such a delight to have on the team. There is not a single Thief who is not completely amazing in every way, and the only reason I can't say Thieves of Rage aren't a particular favorite of mine is the fact that I love all of them equally. Put Nellie into a crowd, have her sap up all of their motivation to fight, and go into a berserker rage that Wastes would be afraid of... I will get on well with her. As for her stats, again, it sucks that everything else is low but I don't care about Wakelessness that much so who cares. I'll level up Gumption to keep her defenses high and worry about the rest as I go.  
The only other thing to draw any attention to is the fact that she has the suckier of the Hash Modi. This one starts with nine cards and will never have a zero card. I do not know why they included it, except to make my life miserable. Screw you, game developers!  
  
NAME: Edward Alanson  
CHUMHANDLE: navalDetective  
INTERESTS: Boating, detective work, fishing  
TITLE: Monk of Time  
ALIGNMENT: Derse  
STATS: High Mangrit, Scamprosity, and Wakelessness. Low Pulchritude and Sluthiness. Again, perfectly normal in every way.  
MODUS: Priority (6 cards)  
INSTRUMENT: Piano  
PERSONAL NOTES: Pretty unusual, seeing a male monk. All the ones I've rolled until now were girls. Them and Guards are the defensive set, which is kind of odd since both Knights and Bards also have defensive powers. In fact, Monks are the exact opposite of Knights, fighting with physical attacks and defending themselves magically. The Time aspect requires no particular explanation, and Monks aren't a bad class to get assigned to it because of the fact that they're so closely related to Knights.  
However, there is a pretty obvious complaint to take note of: his gumption isn't high enough to take note of. Even though Gumption is part of the Time aspect, it got the short end of the stick here. Considering how many saves a Hero of Time needs on average to handle the weird stuff that ends up happening to him, generally the psychological horror of all the doomed timeline selves dying. Since I intend to have a lot of those to make it through, Edward is going to need lots of friends or lots of Gumption to get over everything in the near future. Or both.  
Priority Modus is an annoying bitch, and that's all there is to say on the matter. I'll hopefully find one that isn't like pulling teeth later.  
  
NAME: Marcus Trainer  
CHUMHANDLE: awesomeDude  
INTERESTS: Skating, rock bands, kid's cartoons  
TITLE: Sage of Law  
ALIGNMENT: Prospit  
STATS: High Gumption and Pulchritude. Low Imagination. Everything else is straight-up middle of the road.  
MODUS: Tree (12 cards)  
INSTRUMENT: Tuba  
PERSONAL NOTES: Marcus, your title bugs me. Law is easily one of my least favorite aspects, right up there with Depth and Fear. As a Sage, his job is to hang around his friends and dispense buffs like no tomorrow. The larger the group he's buffing, the better the buffs he'll be handing out. And yet, Law is all about restriction of actions and creating focus. I'm not sure what he'll be particularly good at. Probably something though. There are 784 possible roles, so even I haven't seen them all yet.  
His stats are actually legitimately awesome, so forget his name is Marcus and just run with awesomeDude. Pulchritude is an immense boon because consorts and carapaces count towards group size. Recruit them, boost them, let them do all the killing. Meanwhile, Gumption will hopefully keep him from being too squishy on either front. His Sluthiness and Wakelessness are the best of his other stats, so I guess I'll keep them going and have awesomeDude be my main Prospit dreamer once I get the Hero of Space in.  
Oh, and his Modus is nice too. Not super good, not bad. I'll keep it.  
  
NAME: Dakota McBride  
CHUMHANDLE: dallyingDestroyer  
INTERESTS: Sports, war games, and RPGs  
TITLE: Bane of Doom  
ALIGNMENT: Derse  
STATS: High Gumption and Pulchritude again. Low Sluthiness this time. Like Marcus, the rest is middle of the road.  
MODUS: Array (4 cards)  
INSTRUMENT: Drums  
PERSONAL NOTES: Another weird title. Banes are a particularly weird class, kind of a Prince with a twist. Things related to the Bane's aspect turn into things from other aspects. This sounds really super useful, but when there's twenty-seven aspects that AREN'T yours (well, actually only twenty-five; each aspect has two aspects it never creates) and you have no control over which one is going to pop up, it's surprisingly unfun at times. You also don't lose the full effect of the original aspect; if your Bane of Time is Slowed, he stays slowed but also maybe heals himself. The good news is that Doom is associated with lost hit points, so whenever she takes damage I'll be able to throw around weird side effects to my enemies. The two aspects Doom will never turn into are Rage and Mist. Rage is no big loss since I don't need two berserkers on my team, but losing Mist buffs in a team where I don't have a Hero of Mist is a bit of a disappointment.  
Her stats are almost make up for that, because again they're so close to the average starting values that I see no real problems. Since I don't like using the Time/Space heroes for my actual dreamers, I will use her Derse alignment to have her be the envoy to the Horrorterrors whenever I need that. Her Gumption will be a good boost here. And of course, Pulchritude means more allies, which means that I'll have a nice fighting force all together, especially since four other heroes so far (and also this last one I'm about to comment on) have it and will level in it. This is a big boon against the Black King.  
Her modus is simple and will be a great boon.  
  
NAME: Shauna Darnley  
CHUMHANDLE: angelicNarcoleptic  
INTERESTS: Puppetry, sports, and fortune-telling  
TITLE: Maid of Space  
ALIGNMENT: Prospit  
STATS: High Pulchritude and Wakelessness. NO low stats. Everything else is at least average. Her worst stats are Lass-Sass and Gumption, though.  
MODUS: Timer  
INSTRUMENT: Whistle  
PERSONAL NOTES: Do you know what my favorite title in the game is? Okay it's not this one. It's Page of Space (Pages are invulnerable if you know what you're doing and great buffers). But Maids are the active forms of Pages, and are mechanically just as good. The differences are in their attacking styles, and that Maids debuff enemies instead of buffing them. The only reason I like Pages more is that I'm big on passive classes. Ironically, I've only had three of them. In any event, a Maid of Space means that I have a formidble force on my end. The downside to this is that Space heroes have to enter last in the chain (I'm not using AH's Double Reacharound, so I can't cheat by making two smaller chains for four and getting Shauna in, say, number six). But I'll be able to keep going despite this.  
Her stats are pretty nice. It's important to remember that of course the total values of all eight of these guys are all equal, so really what's going on is that she has low-average values that are still passable but not as good as some of her compatriot's, but I won't ruin the magic too much. I'm gonna pour a lot of work into her Speed to get her up to proper Maidly levels, and then she's basically set for life.  
The Timer Modus is a complete bitch that I'll have to Prospit dream to properly set up half the time but again, I'll just make her a new one. Or give it to Edward.

OVERALL SUMMARY

The team's a little too active for my liking, with a 5:3 ratio where I'd prefer a 3:5. Still, both the Heir and the Maid are debuffers so it's not a complete wash from my playing perspective. Still, here's the complete list for easy use, in the order I will endeavour to bring them into the Medium:

THE FULL LIST: Monk of Time, Thief of Rage, Heir of Storm, Guide of Flesh, Sage of Law, Bard of Peace, Bane of Doom, Maid of Space

So, let's see here...

PROS:

  * My space/time duo are both pretty good classpects; Monk for basically being designed to take advantage of Time, Maid for just being a good class in general.
  * The Heir and the Thief are two other pretty nifty classes.
  * Limited elemental bullshit.
  * No Waste/Grace class, which means no recoil shenanigans.



CONS:

  * No Heart, Flux, Hope, or Light means no screwing with the mechanics.
  * No Life (even though it's an elemental bullshit class) means that healing is at a premium.
  * Those are the big complaints, but of course all aspects missing (except Depth to some extent) means some kind of trade-off. But I'm not going to do a 28-player session, so I'll live.
  * No Seer/Sylph means no temporal scrying
  * No Thane/Fae means I'm missing some of the better buffers
  * Really, having a Bane at all is at best a mixed bag
  * Same with Bards
  * What the hell does a Guide of Flesh even do???



There's other cons like the way I've established that there are very few friends among this group; specifically there's only enough to make an entry chain. But those don't count since they're my fault. Even though I'm betting I'll be regretting that later, it's too late to change all of this now without redoing everything that makes this team a fun experiment. It'll just make being friendly all the more difficult. Next update: The typical BS of getting into the Medium.


	2. Edward's Entrance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think the chapter title is summary enough in this case.

WHAT HAPPENS: Characters finalized, senses of dread fully settling over myself, it's time to get everything going for real and open up the character select screen. The first time it appears, seven of the eight characters are selectable, but all I can do really is adjust the order of who goes in when and thus take control of the first person. The order I'm gonna go with is Edward, Nellie, Steven, Amelia, awesomeDude, Thomas, Dakota, and Shauna.  
  
I feel obliged to mention as Sburb begins to load properly that it's important to remember just how many Overhaul Mods and variations there are. Each Overhaul mod created something entirely new; AH's First Guardians, for example, or G^3's Land Underworlds. This Overhaul focused a lot on messing with the interface and adding all sorts of crazy options. The walkthrough conceit that AH used in his Let's Play for example is an actual option here, designed to help address the player's needs.  
  
Twenty minutes later, Sburb finishes the first bit of its procedural generation and plops me down in Edward's house. It's your typical suburban dwelling; two bedrooms, one-and-a-half bathrooms, a joint kitchen-dining room... Really, if it weren't for the bizarre amount of stuffed animals everywhere, the place would look pretty normal. I am guessing at this point that Edward has a female guardian, though of course there's no actual way to be certain at this point. Guardians have gotten into all sorts of weird things. My favorite was a scenario where the guardian was actually YOUNGER than the player and the owner a ridiculous amount of (censored, obviously) pornography. That wasn't my game file though, just something I saw a screenshot of.  
  
I've decided to be sure that this Let's Play is newb-friendly, so I'll go over these opening basics. Like the Sims, each player has several need bars. Hunger and Energy are obvious enough, though unlike Sims, Hunger isn't particularly fatal. If it bottoms out, you pass out and depending on where you are in the game, you wake up again with either your guardian, the consorts, or carapaces having fed you. You do lose a couple hours though, as your dreamself does not activate when this happens. Energy is straightforward and exists primarily to encourage players to use the dreamselves, who do not have needs. A Social need is present too, and can be satisfied to varying extents by interacting with any living thing in the game.  
  
Then there's the needs that Sims don't have. Sanity is a big one. Spend too much time with the Horrorterrors or the Hope or Doom Land inhabitants and you tend to go just a little bit haywire. The Silliness need sounds like a straight rip-off of fun, but it basically is an attempt of the game to keep things relentlessly light-hearted. Basically, slamming weird stuff together with the alchemizers, having goofy chats with your friends, abusing your powers... All of those things keep the Silliness need in check. Watching TV won't cut it. The sixth and final need is Esteem. It's basically an added success modifier onto everything else. I'll discuss these needs a little more once they become relevant, but for now it's enough to know that I'm keeping my eye on them.  
  
Luckily, Edward is completely full on all of his needs. This is not always the case. As a rule, the better you do in this game, the more hellish the game will make each new entry sequence. It's a pretty nifty trick. Anyway. A kid's room has a lot of options to mess around with. Normally people get distracted by the interests a kid has- in Edward's case there's boats strewn all over his room and some posters for the Sherlock Holmes TV shows. I'm just going to ignore all of that though, because again, his needs are maxed out. All his posessions will do is keep his Sanity up or worse, possibly knock his Esteem down. I'll give you guys the grand tour of his room later.  
  
Instead, I'll start the inevitable bullshit quest of getting the Sburb discs. I find that they're pretty much always in the last place you look, so to spare myself the humilitation I check the Sylladex (empty), and the computer's disc drive (also empty). The room doesn't seem to have any signs of the discs, though there the traditional Birthday Item. In this incarnation, the Item is a birthday card which helpfully announces the date: August 14th. Woooooo. Happy birthday little fictional guy. I wish you the best of luck. I'm going to need it.  
  
I guess it's inevitable. I take Edward out of his room and begin the hunt not for the Sburb discs but for his guardian. The game's script is so predictable, really, because it wants me to have a tutorial fight before I start rushing into the Medium. Checking Edward's specibus, I discover he has been pre-allocated. Dammit. There is nothing more frustrating than having the game decide it knows best. He has Crossbowkind, a ranged weapon which basically adds up to "the least helpful thing for a Monk to be wielding." Poor Edward. All these little flaws just keep adding up.  
  
Exploring the house doesn't reveal much of interest until I enter the living room. Sburb has a fog of war concept, so I only have accurate information about the room my character is currently in, and as soon as I arrive, the appearance of a female guardian is made obvious. She is labeled "Sister", and she's holding up the Sburb discs. Guardians are basically incapable of communicating, so I'm not sure if she's taunting Edward, or if she has moral reservations against video games. Guardians only have so many personality types, so I'm confident it's one of those, but not sure which I prefer. Taunter Guardians show up frequently for very difficult, draining battles, but are nice ways to gain experience, while Moral Guardians mostly wind their way to Derse and hopefully take out a couple members of the Archagent's gang before being killed tragically.  
  
Either way, all that matters right now is that I have to beat the shit out of Edward's Sister to get anywhere. STRIFE begins, and immediately the Smart Strife Menu appears. The SSM is perhaps personally responsible for 50% of all player deaths, as it just refuses to give you particularly good options. Here I've got "AIM", "ARTILLERATE" and "ANTHROPHAGE LIGHT", which sounds horrifying but basically means "Bite." ("ANTHROPHAGE MAX" is the horrifying one, but it takes a completely empty Sanity bar and a completely maxed-out Grimdark stat.) If I had an inventory right now, I'd probably get something like "ACQUISITIONS" for an Item Menu.  
  
Guardian Strifes are always pretty iffy, but never moreso than the beginning fight. Odds of victory here are actually pretty miniscule, which makes players seem all the more pathetic since most guardians only attack once every turn or so. But I use AIM to at increase Accuracy (because the fight is at such close range and Edward's accuracy is pretty high for level one already, AIM basically guarantees my making contact) and then ARTILLERATE when Sister wastes her turn. I don't seem to do very much damage, and Sister has an AUTO-PARRY move that knocks off half of Edward's Vitality Gel. I quickly retaliate with ANTHOPHAGE LIGHT, and Sister AUTO-PARLEYs, ending the fight.  
  
I get the discs and Sister runs off, pissed at me for biting her. No clue as to whether she's a Taunter or a Moral Guardian yet. I'm feeling a little dumb for saying the odds of victory were miniscule because this was actually an easy fight. Sburb seems basically designed to mess with your head this way. I send Eddy-the-victor back to his room and SPECIFICALLY only install the client disc. Never, ever, ever try to install the server disc for the first person in the chain. I have had computers explode. I have had First Guardians show up. On one occasion meteors killed all of my players and I got a cute little ending message about how some OTHER kids on Earth were the fated ones and how if I wasn't going to do this right, I was just a brief and unfortunate distraction.  
  
There is a reason that this game is an exercise of frustration.  
  
Eddy-boy installs the client disc without problem, and now I can sit back and relax a little. It's unusual that the game is so cooperative, but I will not look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead, it is time to start seeking out friends. Eddy-boy (and also Shauna) were picked to be the edges of the chain because unlike the other players their interests do not overlap with more than one person. His only friend is Nellie, our resident Thief, who the game has decided has a Neutral attitude to him. This low value means that I'll now be messing with the Relationship Minigame.  
  
All pesterchum conversations are presented with several options for proceeding. Since I am initiating this conversation, I can choose the general tone of the first words. It presents them as "Cheerful," "Angry," and "Proud". Naturally, this is all horribly mislabeled. "Cheerful" can mean "Happy" or "Aggravatingly Peppy", and while in a usual neutral scenario no one will react negatively to "Happy", "Aggravatingly Peppy" can send a relationship downhill faster than the meteors that are all inbound. Worse, it's very difficult to figure out exactly when your controlled character will take things over the top. Sometimes their attitude in general just means they'll do it naturally, and sometimes it's because they're so happy about some minor matter that they just can't help themselves.  
  
"Angry" actually makes sense, but "Proud" is not actually a negative in some cases! It can on occasion be implied to mean "Proud of yourself", which is a reaction that most players won't react negatively too unless you're proud of something awful or if you won't share all the details the way you're supposed to. The latter is somehow more infuriating to them than the former; it seems that these kids are horrendous gossips or something.  
  
Because Eddy-boy just had a carefree victory against his guardian, I choose the Proud option and watch the automated conversation unfold. While you can view Pesterchum logs between players, the simple fact of the matter is that they're nowhere near as good as you'd hope. There is an element of Chatbot to them, to be honest. To demonstrate why I won't be sharing every damn log between kids, here is the first (and only) log for this LP. And no, I'm not color-coding shit.  
  
ND: hey-o!  
DA: Like hey  
DA: Ho  
ND: you will never guess what I have just done!  
DA: Probably not  
DA: What  
ND: please guess!  
DA: No  
ND: you are so boring!  
DA: Thanks  
DA: You too  
ND: i beat my sister in a fight!  
DA: Can she be defeated  
ND: yes! yes she can!  
DA: How does she look  
ND: who cares? i have done other cool things lately too!  
DA: What have you done a few times lately  
ND: i have installed Sburb!  
DA: Yes  
DA: Love that  
DA: Want to play  
ND: yes please!  
  
It is like watchin two mildly retarded ducks attempt to interact, but without the comedy. For those who were more interested in mechanics, I will note that once I tried to set the mood, I chose the "Persistant" option to try to force our negative Nellie to play along, but she refused. Eddy-boy then auto-insulted her, because the characters have their own personalities. I am betting that he is a semi-Hostile type and that Nellie has a bit of Sardony to her. After that, I chose "Give In", and "Deflect" to move the conversation forward, and Eddy ended it nicely with an Auto-Accept.  
  
Nellie proceeds to run her copy of Sburb and hook up to Eddy-boy's account, and for the first time I suddenly gain the slightest bit of control over her, albeit only her ability to adjust Eddy's house. Most new players balk somewhere along the line here; there's so much to absorb in here that they usually get completely wrapped up in trying to figure out why building could be at all relevant and then they've wasted all their starting grist. Eddy has a healthy 40 starting grist to play with so no complaints there. Since Sluthiness was not a team strong point, I'm basically going to have to set up a couple dedicated Sluthers so that someone has a usable amount. Or possibly make this game a "No SLU increases" challenge? Or, for more masochism,  only leveling in things that I'm already going to level in anyway until those stats max out (which basically isn't going to happen - I don't remember exactly how God Tiering works here but the only one who has a chance of maxing out is Thomas with all his Pulchritude). Oh yeah.  
  
...now that I've mentioned that, you guys are going to encourage me to go down that path, aren't you? Jerks.  
  
I'll attempt to make you forget any such thoughts by going into detail about what I'm doing with the Grist. I copy the stairs in his house, go outside, and build them up from the ground to the roof (10 grist, 5 for each flight). I tear out the slanted roof (another 10 grist) so that the region is accessible, and I'm basically done here. This is a strategy EVERYONE should use for their first character because it immediately preps you for building upward and only costs 20 grist, maybe 30 if you have a three-story. If you were so dumb as to go with a character who had a THREE or less in Sluthiness, well I guess you'll have to move furniture around like a sucker.  
  
Nellie places the Alchemiter, the Cruxtruder, the Totem Lathe, and the pre-punched card all pretty close to each other on the roof and I navigate Eddy-boy down through the ground floor and then back up again. Nellie will have to open up the Cruxtruder for Eddy-boy since his Mangrit is not remarkable, and so I have her grab the bathtub out of the main bathroom (cleanliness is completely unimportant at a time like this) and toss it directly at the Cruxtruder.  
  
It opens up and a timer appears displaying eight minutes, fourteen seconds. I won't need half of that. Eddy-boy pulls his Cruxite Dowel out of the Cruxtruder (and with it, the Kernelsprite), and is given all the instructions he needs to generate his Cruxite Artifact. Meanwhile, I take a look through the house to decide what item Nellie should toss into the kernelsprite so that this Let's Play doesn't turn into a total loss straight out. There really isn't a lot of variety to choose from in my opinion; Eddy-boy's possessions tend to lean towards the "not at all resembling life" (like the piano) or "depicting human beings" (Sherlock Holmes).  
  
The first set is completely impossible to prototype, as far as I know. Some people have tried to do mods of it but the closest anyone got ended up having all enemies become unable to act once the inanimate object was added in. If someone's heard of a better mod in this department, please let me know because I think there's some great options with that (I will turn all my Underlings into BOATS! BOATS I SAY!!!). The second set has been modded many times to be impossible to PRE-entry prototype, but it is possible in the Vanilla and in fact in my current mod configuration. Every human-based enemy that your kids fight and defeat lowers their Sanity by 10%, which in turn means that you will shortly have a full set of Grimdark players and will basically have already lost.  
  
Sister's possessions are much more reasonable; everything Nellie can see involves stuffed animals in some way. There's even a stuffed fish in the bathroom I haven't torn apart yet. For the purposes of fun, I'll toss in a teddy bear. There's a 10% chance that Teddy Underlings are nice and harmless, and a 90% chance that they are in fact bears. While Bear Imps are no more dangerous than Kleenex Imps would be, Bear Giclopses are seriously some of the most terrifying common Underlings I have ever encountered. I have thus far been unsuccessful in soloing one without a God Tier player, and I feel uncomfortable fighting them unless I've got three kids working together, or at least a Time player. The more uncommon Underlings (Krakens, Occulossi, Arachalfs) are basically ridiculous.  
  
Nellie gives me some grief about tossing the bear in; like all starter players she honestly has no understanding that Kernelsprites are of any particular importance and it's always difficult getting these kids to do useful things if you're metagaming. But ultimately, she relents because the game doesn't want to make prototying too difficult; and so Teddysprite is born. I will have to find a picture of Roosevelt to throw in for post-Entry. There is literally no other way to take this.  
  
Eddy-boy finishes up the alchemy process and creates the typical first-guy-in entry item: The apple tree. An apple blooms, falls onto the ground, and Eddy picks it up with a distinct lack of enthusiasm because his Hunger stat is maybe two percent below full. I make him take the traditional first bite anyway. My screen goes white and a loading process begins as the game generates the land that my Monk of Time will receive. Once I have control again, I take note of the general surroundings: a very rocky land with things arranged in very specific patterns. Then, I save up and quit because really there's only so much that can be done at a time.  
  
CLOSING THOUGHTS: Things went... surprisingly well. I would actually argue that they went entirely too well and I'm slightly nervous because the better the early game goes, the more curves the midgame is likely to throw me. I hope that prototyping a bear will negate that to some extent, but I guess we'll see. In the meantime, Eddy-boy is not going to be winning a lot of points with me because of his annoying Sylladex (which I have avoided using thus far) and Specibus (especially irksome since usually for your first character you can allocate things yourself), so I guess I'll probably be leaving him on auto a lot as we go.  
  
NEXT TIME: Making friends, fighting Imps, and building up: The early game begins! Also some surprise appearances from the future selves of Eddy-boy.


	3. The Ascents Begin

WHAT HAPPENS: Every time I've started up a game of Sburb and got someone into the Medium, the game hasn't bothered to tell me the name of the land until I get through Gate 1. Yet at the same time I am also able to reduce things rather nicely just because this is a Time player. From his class and the general layout of the Land, I am guessing that one of the keywords is Zen. Because he uses a piano for his magical (er, musical; I'd correct the typo but I like it) instrument, the other word should be Tempo.  
  
While I'm just standing around thinking about this, the kernelsprite separates into its many glorious components and Teddysprite floats around adorably, making little plush growls and shit. I'm going to ignore it until I can kill Sister and toss her in. Instead of having Eddy-boy perform the typical Kernelsprite examination, I send him downstairs to talk to Nellie. They have the typical discussion about the game, specifically focusing on the questions of teleportation and also the known game equipment. He then starts talking to her about anyone else she knows who might want to play this game. Since they didn't see the meteor, they have no clue that this game is actually dangerous.  
  
Nellie can only really name Steven because of everyone's general complete lack of awareness about everyone else, but it's a good start and I have Eddy-boy send Steven some nice introductory messages. The typical "I am a friend of a friend," and "Let us play the Sburb" conversation options, nothing too fancy because fancy equals higher chances of getting rejected for friendship horribly and ending the game watching the last two survivors duel each other to the death on top of BS's corpse. This is a thing that can happen if you're not playing right, which is honestly why I'm doing a Friendship Challenge in the first place. Unless you start everyone else as friends, it is nigh on impossible for people to STAY friends.  
  
While I kill time, the Imps slowly begin to spawn on the edges of the map and work their way towards my house in a haphazard fashion. There are no Bear Imps yet, just the Teddy variety, and if I remember correctly the stat adjustments is that the Imp's Pulchritude will go up (this could be a problem if I let it get out of check, persuasive Imps are mofos like nobody's business) and their Antagonism Jazz (the enemy variant on Mangrit/Lass-Sass) goes down. I have Nellie build a quick stairway between the roof and Eddy-boy's room and have her delete the exposed stairwell for safety. They start winding their way to the house proper, and once one opens up the front door I cut the conversation short and send Eddy-boy downstairs. From the bottom of the stairs he has a great view of the front door and just fires crossbow bolts at anything that comes in.  
  
He isn't very accurate to start with, and his weapon doesn't have a great range so it's slower than it might be to take each and every one of these bastards out, but he climbs five rungs on his echeladder before I sent him back upstairs. I deliberately kept Nellie out of the fight so that she wouldn't be soaking up his XP, since server players do that if you let them join the fray. As for the levelling itself, Monks naturally level in M/L, GUM, and SCA, so he went into that, and since no one managed to encourage me into doing anything weird with leveling, I upped his PUL and SLU to decent values. I'll probably bump them and IMA up to 20 or 30 and call it good. All of his skill development went into Stealth.  
  
Upstairs, Nellie blocks Eddy-boy's bedroom door with his bed and I send Eddy to the roof to get to work on looking into alchemization. When Sburb first came out, people made a lot of crazy guides for alchemy and grist without understanding a very crucial detail: Grist is entirely cosmetic. Sburb just picks a certain number of grists of the 200+ varieties (excepting Build, which is always the most mundane variety) and assigns them as starter grist types. There is no reason to care about what grist types you have because you will always be charged reasonable amounts based on what you have to choose from (or, if the item is supposed to stay out of play but be cheap later on, you will be charged a reasonable amount in a type of grist you haven't found yet).  
  
I have Eddy reproduce a lot of Modus cards and then do some work to see what kind of alchemies he can discover. Because his SLU isn't too great, and what I'm betting is a bad roll, he only determines that ||-type alchemy exists. Everyone now has access to it, and I'll perform some more rolls each time someone enters to try to make new alchemy types. In the meantime, I work with what I've got to create a Plush Shirt and a Magnified Crossbow, along with some nice Silliness-boosting randomness like a Sherlock Holmes-themed toy boat, or a pipe shaped like a fish... You know.  
  
And then I get a little distracted. The character select screen at the bottom has been displaying Edward and Nellie since I brought Edward in, but now the Edward selection screen is bifurc-- trifur--- quadrucated??? I don't know. It would appear that the time loops are beginning. Of course, Sburb is a computer game and not a god, so its time loops are unimpressive. Rather, I must remember the exact level and equipment that each future Eddy has appeared at. As each one adventures, the equipment he needs will slowly present itself (or at least the components for their alchemy), and once Eddy reaches the level of his next future self, he must stop fighting at once, gather up any equipment he still needs without gaining experience points, and then travel into the past. As a handwave for why stats don't necessarily match up too well, every time Eddy time travels, his stats will have minor rearrangements, the implication being that for these big jumps back into the past, his stats are even more scrambled.  
  
I take a quick look at each one and what the AI is having them bother with. Eddy-2 is currently wandering about a multi-level dungeon of some variety on the forty-fifth rung of his echeladder, Eddy-3 is running around the Stock Exchange at only level 50 (thank goodness), and Eddy-4 walked straight into a consort village's inn and is now dreaming on Derse at level 100. Time travelers are granted a separate dreamself for every sleeping incarnation of them, so this won't be a huge problem in the meantime. He immediately takes off towards Prospit, and it's gonna be awhile before he gets there. I'll let him worry about that.  
  
They all seem to be doing fine but I'll have to keep my eyes on them just in case. Of course, their youngest incarnation is the real problem here, since he's only level 6 and at any second the Ogres will be showing up. I send him back downstairs to kill a couple more (read: eight) Imps and get to the seventh echeladder rung. An Ogre has already spawned on the edge of the area (even though there's nothing stopping Eddy from just walking out of his house and going, say, west, the spawning area is about the same size as it would be if he were on an island or plateau) and is beginning to approach but I set Nellie onto auto-build and set Eddy to attack.  
  
Auto-building is a pretty risky behavior because the AIs aren't good at calculating the sorts of paths that are actually useful in any capacity. There are some nice bonuses though. For example, Ogres are only allowed to destroy certain walls (those that aren't necessary to hold the house up), and the AI automatically arranges things so that about 80% of the walls are somehow load-bearing. An Ogre is only a threat if you let it be. I'd much rather have enemy-proof houses than quick to navigate ones, so that's all good. It also keeps Nellie from throwing her own lot into the fight, which again means that she will not be sapping up Eddy's experience.  
  
Once Eddy targets the Ogre, the Imps stop auto-aggressing and just kind of wander off to do their own thing. A bunch get distracted with the fish pipe and start fighting over it harmlessly, for example. And once Eddy gets into the Ogre's range, I realize my big mistake. The Ogre is not a Teddy Ogre.  
  
It is a Bear Ogre.  
  
And it starts wiping the floor with Eddy easily. I mean, it's just fucking pathetic how much it is raping him. Metaphorically. Every time Eddy gets back up on his feet, he gets pounded right back down again. I hurriedly turn Nellie off of Auto-build and send her to drop couches and fridges on the Ogre to whittle down its health, but she's not doing as much damage as I'd like and Eddy isn't getting ANY hits in, which means that he's getting no experience from this encounter. Dammit dammit dammit. Teddysprite drops in and gives Eddy a healing hug, but this makes no difference whatsoever because no one is doing enough damage for health to make the least bit of difference.  
  
So the game busts out its the last ditch player save: The Guardians. Well fuck. Sister quickly bursts out of the house with her... Sfdanimalkind Specibus, I guess. She happens to have a particularly rabid-looking animal, and it can actually move on its own, so I feel somewhat better about-  
  
Nope.  
  
The Ogre just kinda swats it away and it goes flying. That's unfortunate. They don't do that to player weapons. He then grabs Sister and smushes her.  
  
That was fast.  
  
Eddy crawls away from the wreckage that is what used to be his skeleton and muscles and I have Nellie throw Sister into Teddysprite because why waste a perfectly good corpse? Sistersprite's convenient combination of Guardian and Guardian Modus, she's actually doing damage to it with Nellie. The thing is dispatched into a shitton of Build, Iron, and Nitrogen grist, but absolutely no experience points. I take my frustration out on all the Imps that I see and thus SLOWLY grind to level eight. No more Ogres show up of either variety, and the Build Grist is used to build up the rest of the way to gate one. I set Eddy on the top of the house and have him wait for the next Ogre or two (I want him to get to a good level before exploring the land properly), and wait for the spawns to start.  
  
Sistersprite floats upstairs and starts the Skaian Story dialogue, which Eddy and Nellie fixate in on and I ignore. In the meantime, let's look at the other Eddys. Eddy-4 remains en route to Prospit, and damn would I love to know what the plan there is. Except of course, there ISN'T one. I'll have to come up with a justification for his bizarre behavior once he gets here, based entirely on what Eddy-3 was doing at the title. Maybe just have him attempt to have a sloppy makeout with one of the girls. No wait, that would ruin my whole making them friends thing. This is going to be hard, not just randomly fucking around a little.  
  
Eddy-3 continues making a reasonable and balanced amount of boonbucks and grist at the stock market, and sadly he really isn't making as much progress as he could be. I'm 95% convinced that AH either modded his runthrough a lot more than he claimed or that he basically ignored all other characters while somehow masterfully executing the whole LOHACSE situation, because even with his public Stock Exchange mod (which is part of all Overhaul mods) I have never made more than about 200% profit at the Stock Exchange. And that was a game in which I managed to have the Hero of Time permanently ensconced in the Stock Exchange from the moment she entered to about four hours before the Reckoning started up. You know, just enough time to GristTorrent everything around and make all the BAMF weapons.  
  
He's building up a lot of Grist types that are typically associated with the more valuable items, so I'm going to let him stay where he is too. He'll have to skedaddle off eventually to fight enemy types, but hey, the game typically gives you Time Hero v3.0 and maybe 4.0 as a gimme. Thus he's basically always going to be running around, spitting out healing items and sick combos, only to return to the stock exchange and earn as much of a profit as I can muster.  
  
So that leaves Eddy-2. In this whole time he's cleared the dungeon, killed the boss monster, and earned himself an impressive looking Angelic Crossbow. Checking Eddy-3, I see he's wielding a demonic version of it as well, and Eddy-4's specibus contains several unrelated crossbows. Okay. Eddy-2 I send off towards the nearby consort village, and he informs the consorts he's done their quest. They are all very impressed since they didn't even know anything was wrong with their village until he showed up, but they're very grateful and give him a chest with a couple boonbucks inside and mention that their sister village on the other side of the planet has been under attack by chaotic Underlings who are basically destroying the rock gardens. Or something.  
  
I accept the quest and then send Eddy-2 to the next nearest dungeon (a cave in about the opposite direction as the dungeon Eddy-2 spawned in) to have him fuck shit up over there instead because I am not wasting all this time running across the face of the planet. Luckily, it's not a group dungeon so it opens right up for Eddy-2 once he plays the piano at the entrance. A symbol appears over the entryway, announcing that it's a ten-room dungeon, and I send Eddy-2 inside.  
  
For those curious, Eddy has just finished up the Skaian Story and is now waiting for Ogres to spawn.  
  
Back to the action. The first room has about a dozen Imps, which are all easily slaughtered because Eddy uses some nice physical damage fraymotifs like [3itM - Aftermath]. It splits off in two different paths, so I'll start up a nice little strategy I use to decide how to navigate: Always follow the left wall. So he goes left and kills an Ogre... and I begin to realize I'm clearing out a dungeon that would be better approached by somebody who might actually feel threatened by these things. Ah well. Rooms 3 through 5 (I won't describe how everything is connected) are literally nothing but traps that deal a shitton of magical damage if they are undetected. After room four I just throw up Eddy's Magic Shields and call it good. They're a drain, but life goes on and almost nothing here can threaten me because again, overleveled.  
  
Rooms 6 and 7 are imp bases, no big deal. Room 8 is a musical puzzle. Since this is a low-level dungeon, it's a pretty simple puzzle: Just some sheet music hidden behind the piano that, when played, opens up a treasure chest with a measily 1000 boondollars. All of this exploring done, I guide Eddy-2 into the ninth room in the dungeon, which is where the boss fight takes place. A nice feature of Sburb is that if you make it to the boss room, it always generates something that's actally an appropriate encounter for the individuals there instead of generating somthing that fits the levels of the monsters outside. So a mere Bear Giclops arrives.  
  
The Giclops is a mildly difficult enemy to fight at this level, because it has a few special abilities. It always takes the first move in combat, for example. It attempts to smush Eddy-2, which is mildly inconvenient, but the [Smash] tactic fails and I only take damage. I summon a Time Clone from the end of the fight, he shows up with about half of his health left and Eddy-2 and Eddy-2.5 start wailing away at the guy. One of the nice Time exploits is that its solo fraymotifs behave as dual fraymotifs when cast simultaneously, so both of them cast [Red Disc] to start doing as much physical damage as possible.  
  
This is not the best strategy against a Giclops since they are very physical enemies but that is why one of my challenges is only to use the skills that are actually "sanctioned" for the classes I have to use. The Giclops just smashes Eddy-2.5 a bit and Eddy 2 shoots away with his crossbow. Ranged characters in cramped dungeons are also really inefficient. My kingdom for a better specibus.  
  
At the same time, an Ogre has spawned for Eddy to fight and him and Sistersprite (Sprites are somehow allowed to deal damage without experience points. I don't get it) charge into the fray. This one is only a Teddy Ogre, so the big threat is keeping moving. Eddy just barely manages to stay out of his way, and while it's a little cheap, shooting at the Ogre from the top floor while it has to climb up to me is a much better way of handling things if I'm going to be dealing with bears in the long term. Sistersprite spawns a bunch of little puppets like she's playing Pikmin and flings them around for minimal damage on top of that.  
  
Switching between these two fights feels a little awkward though. I focus on Eddy-2 for a bit while the Ogre is climbing. Good thing too, the little bastard was about to die on me. I have him eat some Consort Bugs for a health boost and then try to have the two jump up towards the Giclops's eye for some extra damage to be dealt. This fails pretty awfully and they just fall all over themselves and get beat up a little more. Ughhhhh I am usually better tan this I swear.  
  
Eddy manages to wipe the Ogre down to 25% of his VG before he gets to the top, but the first thing the Teddy Ogre does is give Eddy a bear hug. The bastard. It takes Sistersprite about two minutes to finally pull him free of this, and from here Eddy runs to the other end of the roof and fires away like a little mad man. This Ogre is knocked off the House-Tower and falls to his demise. Nellie uses a chair to scoop up all the Grist and deliver it up. Eddy kills one last Imp and reaches rung eight of the echeladder and gets another 640 boondollars for his success. Because I'm feeling guilty for leaving you guys hanging for so long, I prepare to send him through Gate 1 after dumping all of his new skill points into Athletics, to make him a bit stronger.  
  
Eddy-2 finally makes some progress on the giclops by sending Eddy-2.5 onto his back and having him attack from there. Eddy 2 just runs around and tries to dodge as best as he can, which he does a good enough job at. I am seriously wondering how difficult this session will end up being at the rate it's going. Worse still, it's going to be mostly a grind right now until I get a chance to focus on the more interesting classpects. Monks defend themselves against magical enemies and beat the shit out of things. That's really all there is to it and right now there's not a good way to make that fun to read, especially not in a featureless brown room! So yeah. The Giclops finally falls, Eddy-2 travels back in time to become Eddy-2.5, and Eddy-2.5 is redesignated as Eddy-2.  
  
The final room of the dungeon contains the delicious spoils: another couple of boonbucks. Eddy-2 pockets them and wanders back to the surface, where I have him spend most of his shared boondollar account (weird thing about Time players) on dual fraymotifs. [Adagio Redshift] is always a delight of course, but I really love [Waltz of Aging] and [Tempest Accelerando] too. I then point him towards a random village, and with Eddy, I toss him through Gate 1. The pre-rendered cinematic zooms out and reveals my prediction was correct. This is a Land of Zen and Tempo, and Hephaestus has made it his business to ruin the place until the Forge shows up.  
  
Eddy's got his work cut out for him.  
  
CLOSING THOUGHTS: So yeah. Giclopses and Ogres are bitches right now and I'm going to have a tough time with them. I think that I'll have Eddy-2 recruit some consort buddies and bring them along next time, both to show off some of the fun of that mechanic and also to make fights go by a bit faster, with less emphasis on healing items. I didn't note this at the time, but it was mostly luck that Eddy-2's available item was a Consort Bug healing thing. The next-highest priority that he's allocated is that bullshit pipe I alchemized. He doesn't even HAVE other healing items in his Sylladex. So yeah.  
  
NEXT TIME: I throw the next ball in the air as we work on getting Nellie to happily enter the Medium.

**Author's Note:**

> The reason I'm doing this is that I think a Let's Play is a pretty cool idea for Sburb, and while I was preempted by NonPlayerCharacter's own work, the fact that it hasn't been updated in so long means that there won't be any competition for audiences.


End file.
